Midway Campaign
DOS - 1983
Also available on: Apple II - Atari 8-bit - Commodore 64 - TRS-80 CoCo - VIC-20
Description of Midway Campaign
One of the oldest naval wargames ever made, Avalon Hill's Battle for Midway (a.k.a. Midway Campaign) is a very primitive ASCII wargame written entirely in BASIC that simulates the battle of Midway Island in World War II.
You must type in commands similar to text adventures, and there's no campaign mode to speak of. You can control either the Japanese fleet (including carriers Asagi, Kaga, Soryu, Hiryu, and Zuiho) or American (including carriers Enterprise, Hornet, Yorktown, and Midway). At the end of battle, the game will report whether any carrier has been lost, and how many planes on either side are shot down, as well as a bottom-line report of which side won the tactical victory.
Overall, Battle for Midway is probably too primitive to hold anyone's interest for long, but it serves as a good history lesson of how wargames of the past are programmed... this being a BASIC program, you can "hack" the game pretty quickly to see how it was made ;)
Note: Additional comments from M.E. Brooks' synopsis: "an operational/strategic simulation of the Midway Campaign, this game was one of the first Midway computer versions. Using an X-Y axis to depict operations during the battle gave an adequate challenge in 1980, but its design parameters were soon revealed to be obsolete."
Review By HOTUD
External links
Captures and Snapshots
Comments and reviews
Bartislartfast 2022-05-01 2 points
Simple but very addicting. Have played this probably a hundred times over the years. Send out your planes then comes the nail-biting wait. No two games play out the same.
collin 2018-01-26 0 point
Hey, Creativeguy,
If you download it, you can get into the quick basic files. They are appended ".BAS." And it's total spaghetti code, without comments. But cool.
Mr. Spridget 2016-08-21 0 point
You can also do "What If" scenarios by going into the program and changing the number of planes on each carrier. For example, the Navy used a 25 / 50 / 25 ratio of fighters, dive bombers and torpedo planes. Later, they switched to a 40 / 40 / 20 ration. Or you can put up a 100 F4F CAP.
CreativeGuy 2016-07-29 1 point
Is the code to this available anywhere? I want to teach my nephew how the code works - see if he can rewrite it in python.
RSJREV 2015-09-14 0 point
I agree that it is primitive, but it still portrays the Battle of Midway well.
kevnifico 2014-08-10 -1 point DOS version
Any way that midway campaign can run on a kidle fire hdx?
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DOS Version
Apple II Version
- Year: 1983
- Publisher: Avalon Hill Game Company, The
- Developer: Microcomputer Games, Inc.
Atari 8-bit ROM
- Year: 1980
- Publisher: Avalon Hill Game Company, The
- Developer: Microcomputer Games, Inc.
Commodore 64 Version
- Year: 1983
- Publisher: Avalon Hill Game Company, The
- Developer: Microcomputer Games, Inc.
TRS-80 CoCo Version
- Year: 1983
- Publisher: Avalon Hill Game Company, The
- Developer: Microcomputer Games, Inc.
VIC-20 Version
- Year: 1983
- Publisher: Avalon Hill Game Company, The
- Developer: Microcomputer Games, Inc.
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